The face of the old man contracted with a sudden grimace of shame and pain. Squire Phin, who had been staring at her, his palms outspread on the table to prop himself, pushed some papers over the notes spread before the Judge and trembled in every muscle.
She flashed a sudden look that was half-indignation into his burning eyes.
“Have I not been unwomanly enough without your making me coax you and wheedle you to me, as I have had to woo your old dog?” she demanded, stamping her foot. And then seeing that he swayed dizzily at the table, confounded by the situation, she came close, reached across over the scattered papers and patted his broad hand.
“Now what have you got to say to me, Phineas?” she whispered. “I know you can talk, for I have listened to you with my heart in my mouth.”
But even while the Judge was scrambling up from his chair with stammering words on his lips, even as the Squire seized the white hand that fluttered above his own, another visitor entered the office.
This visitor—and a very obstreperous visitor it was—threw his hat upon the table, squared his elbows and glared at the three in turn.
It was Captain Kleber Willard of the Lycurgus Webb. His dark seaman’s face was streaked with purple blotches, his eyes were bloodshot and sullen, and it was apparent that passion and liquor had combined to give Captain Willard an unamiable temper. His gaze first singled the Squire with an especially furious squint of hatred, but his father spoke to him and he whirled on the Judge.
“Why didn’t you do as you agreed?” he shouted. “Me to Buenos Ayres and back, off earnin’ a dollar, where I couldn’t protect myself, and you promisin’ to keep that deal covered! Why didn’t you do it, I say?”
The old man turned a pitiful glance on his daughter and attempted to quiet the angry man with words spoken close to his ear, but the Captain twisted away from him.
“It’s time the whole of this family knows what the others are about,” he raged. “I ain’t doin’ anything that I’m ashamed of. The rest of ye see to it that you ain’t, either. I tell ye I won’t keep still. Sylvene Willard is old enough to know bus’ness, or she can leave the room. If some that I can see here had any instincts of a gentleman they’d get out, too, when a family is talkin’ its bus’ness. I tell you, father, you’ve got to explain to me how you let me get dropped for ten thousand. You didn’t send Bradish the margins as you agreed. You dropped him, too. It’s no use for you to hush-a-bye me. I know you did it.